George R. R. Martin’s 14 Greatest LiveJournal Entries

Photo: Nick Briggs/HBO

Game of Thrones creator George R. R. Martin is an old-school kinda guy. Not only does he compose his beloved fantasy novels on a DOS word processor, but he has refused to bend the knee to would-be social media sovereigns Twitter and Facebook, instead remaining loyal to his one and only online media presence: the LiveJournal he’s had since 2005. Unlike the flighty and inconstant digital youth of today, who flit hither and thither between blogging platforms and social networks like a bee from one flower to the next, Martin is a rock. A rock! He will not be moved!

Although in recent years—likely because of the intense media attention—his posts have sadly become more limited to announcements, back in the halcyon days of the mid-to-late ’00s, they were a veritable goldmine. For his thoughts on everything from Star Wars to threesomes to a tantalizing tease about the future of a fan-favorite character, here are the 14 best things George R. R. Martin ever wrote on his LiveJournal.

George R. R. Martin Once Made an Error Most Grave

For the first year of his LiveJournal, George R. R. Martin lived in the blissful ignorance of the digitally innocent, shielded from the harsh realities of internet discourse like a child of summer. But in 2006, he made a decision as fateful and foreboding as Lysa Arryn’s clandestine letter to Catelyn Stark: He turned the comments on. And winter arrived.

The last time I was here, I happened to look at my friend Daniel Abraham’s blog, and I noticed people commenting on his posts. That seemed like a nice feature. “I wonder if I could do that too?” I thought, so I dug around a bit and found the comment switch and turned it on. Now I’m frightened. Daniel gets like ten comments. I had forty within a few hours, and now it seems I have a hundred, just on my latest post. And there are comments on the older posts too, including some people who want to argue politics… I don’t know. I am starting to wonder if turning on the comments was such a good idea…

He Used to Tease HBO Casting Announcements Like Game of Thrones Prophecies

Perhaps the best thing about the early days of Martin’s LiveJournal—particularly during the first season of the show—were his delightfully abstruse teases for casting announcements, which read like prophecies worthy of Quaithe the shadowbinder. Seriously, how great are these (for Jon Arryn, Lord Mormont, and Alliser Thorne, respectively)?

The first never says a word in the books. The second gave up one lordship and received another. The third birthed a monkey, a pimple, and a loon. The first flew by night to find the truth. The second is a merry man from the god of war. The third was a supervillain, and once ambled amongst oak trees and hollies, where he might have come across a golden rose.

He Is Really Into Football

Big University of Georgia fan, right here. Image courtesy HBO

Like, really into football. After a win by one of his two favorite teams, the New York Jets or the Giants, his posts always begin with “life is magical and full of joy!” while losses aways lead with the Melisandre-esque “life is meaningless and full of pain.” If you’ve ever wondered which teams the various noble houses of Westeros would cheer, forget BuzzFeed: Martin already handled it during the NFL playoffs in 2012.

The wildlings and the men of the Night’s Watch and even some northmen are all pulling for the Giants, of course. But in the Vale of Arryn and the Mountains of the Moon, they’re Falcons fans. The Lannisters are cheering on Detroit, even if the lion is the wrong color, but some of the smallfolk of Lannisport on its western bay are fond of those 49ers. The High Septon and all the septa and septons and devout of the realm are for the Saints. The butchers and tanners of King’s Landing and Oldtown are behind the Packers, the smiths and armorers are with the Steelers. At the Citadel of Oldtown, the archmaesters and the Conclave are all about the Ravens, but across the narrow sea the khals and Dothraki horselords are screaming and whistling for the Broncos. In Volantis, the tigers are Bengals backers; the elephants are rooting for whoever plays the Bengals. Nobody anywhere knows what a ‘Texan’ is, but a few Dornishmen might support them anyway, just to be perverse. One commonality unites all the Seven Kingdoms, and the lands beyond. Everyone everywhere hates the Patriots, and Evil Little Bill.

That’s New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick (alternately, “Bill Belicheat”), whom Martin has also stated—and I personally like to imagine this in the voice of Worf—has “no honor.”

He Has Thoughts on Threesomes

Presented without comment.

My favorite guilty pleasure movie is SUMMER LOVERS. I want to go to the island of Santorini and have a menage a trois with Darryl Hannah and Valerie Quinessen [sic].

He Is Totally Over Star Wars

Photo courtesy Lucasfilm

I keep seeing people calling STAR WARS “the best science fiction film of all time.” Uh… really? I don’t think so. The original STAR WARS was a good movie, and EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was even better (Leigh Brackett wrote that one, so there’s good reason), but RETURN OF THE JEDI went downhill, and you really don’t want to get me started about those three wretched prequels. Even the original triad hasn’t aged as gracefully as one might have hoped. It has become apparent that much of the charm of the first movie came from the novelty of seeing favorite tropes from classic SF books realized on the screen for the first time… but that charm wears off on repeated viewings, and once it does you realize that neither the story is, well… not all that it could have been. You also realize how much retrofitting and backfill has gone on since the movie’s first release. I don’t care what Lucas says, I will never believe that Darth was meant to [be] Luke’s father from the outset, or that the romantic pairing was always supposed to be Leia and Han (it is plainly Luke and Leia)… and damn it, Han shoots first!

And Star Trek. He Is Also Over Star Trek

The 2009 reboot? Forget it.

The actors do a very creditable job of creating young versions of all the familiar characters from Classic Trek, but the writing sucks start to finish, and the science fictional aspects are ludicrous even for STAR TREK. Fans of the old show might like the film… but then again, maybe not, since it’s a “reboot” (Hollywoodese for “retcon”) and pisses all over the original continuity. Me, I think they should just let this tired, tired franchise die. STAR WARS too. I don’t ever need to see another wookie, or another klingon. (They won’t, of course. Not so long as there’s one more nickle to be made. I know how Hollywood works). I love SF, and I love space opera, but can’t we have some new characters in a new universe?

He Went on Second Life as Tyrion and Dropped a (Possibly) Huge Clue About Him

Image courtesy Linden Research

The online virtual world Second Life was all the rage in the mid-to-late ’00s, and in 2007 Martin decided to do a virtual reading of A Dance with Dragons. At a virtual bookstore. Although his avatar was designed to look like Tyrion by popular vote, he lamented that people hadn’t chosen Ned, whose avatar had been designed with a detachable head. “I would have taken it off during the reading, and let the body wander around the bookshop while the head read,” wrote Martin.

Well, I made my appearance on Sheep Island a few hours ago, cleverly disguised as Tyrion the Imp for a reading and Q&A session at Bantam’s virtual bookstore. Only this version of Tyrion could fly! Ah, if only the Tyrion in the books could fly, what mischief he will… ah… could… ah, never mind.

So what does that mean for the future of Tyrion in the books (and beyond)? While there’s no way of knowing for sure, I have a theory (and I swear to god, don’t click this link if you don’t want to know) that it might just be this.

He Thought the Battlestar Galactica Finale Sucked, Too

Martin is not only a veteran TV writer, he’s also done quite a bit of teaching on the craft of writing, particularly at the Clarion Sci-Fi and Fantasy workshop. So he didn’t hold back with his critiques when it came to the disappointing finale of the sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica. But hey, at least it wasn’t as bad as the Lost finale, amirite?

Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story… I’ve seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings. Pfui. (I sure hope those guys doing LOST have something better up planned for us. Though if it turns out to be They Were All Dead All Along I’m really going to be pissed).

He Stuck With AOL for a Long Time. And Paid Dearly for It

Image courtesy HBO

After the ’90s, most people migrated away from their AOL email accounts to greener pastures. But Martin of House LiveJournal, wielder of DOS and WordStar 4.0, does not so easily forsake the ways of the past. At least until they turn his life into an absolute nightmare, and one that may send familiar chills down the spine of many an erstwhile AOL user.

I sat down and logged on to AOL and suffered some sort of strange computer hiccup… after which, suddenly, my Personal Filing Cabinet and Favorite Places were both completely empty. More than three thousand emails and a couple of hundred bookmarks wiped out in the blink of an eye…. Some days I truly hate computers. Lest anyone have a heart attack, let me hasten to add that this has NOT affected A DANCE WITH DRAGONS or any of my other work-in-progress. I do my writing on a completely different computer than the one I use for email and the internet, in part to guard against viruses, worms, and nightmares like this. My work machine does not even use Windows… So my novel is safe. It’s just my emails that are lost. I suppose, if I can’t fix this, I could try to look at it as a sort of liberation. Last night I had more than three thousand emails awaiting answers. This morning I have none.

He Thinks Windows Sucks, Too

Windows sucks. I use it, under protest, for the internet, but all my fiction is written on a DOS machine, using WordStar 4.0. I’m a word guy. When I want to copy something, I like to type “copy.” When I want to delete it, I like to type “delete.” I don’t like puzzling out these stupid little cartoons they call icons, or dragging them around with a mouse. The day WordStar 4.0 stops working is the day I retire.

One Time the U.S. Government Got Him Blacklisted on PayPal

I demand… ACCESS TO MY PAYPAL ACCOUNT! Image courtesy HBO

In 2006, Martin related a Kafkaesque experience wherein his PayPal account got locked because his name “turned up on a list out of the U.S. Treasury Department.” Feel free to add “delayed the next Game of Thrones novel” to your list of government conspiracies.

About a month ago, I discovered to my puzzlement and annoyance that my account at PayPal had been locked. I had no idea why. The source of my trouble is actually the federal government. The reason my account was locked was because my name has turned up on a list out of the U.S. Treasury Department. Specifically, something called the “Office of Foreign Assets Control.”… Whatever the reason, I’m on the OFAC list, and unlike Santa’s list, this one is just for the naughty, so PayPal has locked the accounts of everyone whose name appears there.The most infuriating thing of all is that I have MONEY in that PayPal account. Money which PayPal flatly refuses to disburse to me. Right now I’m trying to finish A DANCE WITH DRAGONS…. I do NOT have the time to take on PayPal and the U.S. Treasury as well… If any of you are PayPal users, however, and are accustomed to allowing a significant amount of money to sit around in your account… take it out. Take it out NOW. Your name could turn up on a list as easily as mine did, and then, like me, you’ll find yourself cut off from your money with no right of appeal.

He Has Very Strong Feelings About Airport Security

The days of going through the airport without juggling shoes, belts, and tiny containers of liquid may be a fading memory to many, but in 2006, only five years after 9/11, Martin had some choice words for the increasingly invasive and hoop-jumping rules of the Transportation Security Administration.

I have always hated airline “security.” Step by step, year by year, the TSA and its predecessors have taken away more and more of our freedoms, subjecting millions of perfectly innocent travellers to searches and interrogations and other hassles in the vague hopes of catching hijackers (in the old days) and terrorists (these days). Even if it worked, the price would be too high, but of course it does not work. It has never worked. All of the 9/11 killers strolled through airport “security” without a problem, yet little old ladies in wheelchairs are pulled from line and patted down, people who have never committed a crime in their life are being forced to remove their shoes and belts and empty their pockets, and cigarette lighters and toy guns and Swiss army knives are being confiscated and sold (yes, that’s what they do with those lighters they take from people, they SELL them and keep the bucks)…. What’s next, I wonder? Anal probes, x-rays, body cavity searches? Have we become such a nation of sheep that we will line up and swallow all this meekly? If so, let’s change the words in our national anthem. Instead of “land of the free and home of the brave,” maybe “land of the safe and home of the scared” would do.

Sing it, brother!

There Was Once a Spider-Man Comic That Made Him Want to Throw a Rotten Tomato

The Worst. Image courtesy Marvel
Back in 2008, Marvel Comics decided to rewrite Spider-Man’s history by having the devil (yup) end Spider-Man’s marriage to Mary Jane by rewriting history so it never happened. This was a controversial move, to put it lightly, and as a long-time comics fan Martin decided to say what pretty much everyone else was thinking.

Bloody hell. I hate this, and judging from the discussions I am seeing on various blogs, I am not alone. Retconning sucks. Leave the goddamned continuity ALONE, for chrissakes. What happened, happened. Take an old character in a new direction, fine, cool, but don’t go back and mess around with the character’s past. It’s a breach of trust with your audience, as I see it. The DC universe has never really recovered from the Crisis on Infinite Earths, despite all the Crises that have followed, and I think the Marvel universe, and Spidey in particular, will be a long time recovering from this decision. So that’s my two cents. In a nutshell: boo, hiss, shame on you, Marvel. If I had a rotten tomato, I would throw it.

Forget This Wimpy Ice Dancing. He Wants Ice Football!

During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Martin’s Andy Rooney-esque discussion of the more subjective athletic disciplines were a particular delight. In the games of winter, you win or you lose … or you’re not playing a real goddamn sport, OK?

If you don’t know who won until some judge holds up a card or enters a number on a computer, it’s not a sport. Now listen. I am not saying it doesn’t require incredible skill, grace, strength, what have you. I am not saying the participants are not athletes, even. I am certainly not saying this stuff should not exist. But it’s not a sport. I mean, really. Ice dancing? Dancing is an art. Has been an art for thousands of years… All these judged “sports” are too subjective. A real sport may require umps or refs, but you know who won when the contest is over… I propose a new sport for the next Winter Olympics. A REAL sport. Ice football. Played exactly the same way as real (American) football, except everyone is on ice skates. I mean, we have field hockey and ice hockey, why not field football and ice football? Just think of the excitement as Peyton Manning skates backward to get off the pass and those speed skaters on the D-line come flashing after him while his wideouts do spins and triple axels trying to lose the CBs… most exciting sport EVER!!!